"We Americans do not want any plays that require intellect, for we need all that we have in our business enterprises; we do not want to think in the theatre, because it takes all our thoughts to advertise and sell our goods, nor do we want our emotions stirred, for that is a nervous strain, clouds the mind, and makes people unfit for speculation, scheming or anything on the next day. Then, these plays that arrest the brain and touch our very soul, they make us sentimental, soft-hearted, kind-natured, and draw us out on long conversations with our wives, children and friends. Meanwhile the wheels of trade are turning, and in the race for success we are left behind. "We are a healthy people, and we don't want any morbid, lurid, ghastly productions over here, and in a large sense all very serious works are morbid, lugubrious and gloomy. At bottom of them there is always a problem, an evil, a crying wrong, a morbid state of something. A happy home is not dramatic; people at peace with themselves and the world are not good subjects for tragedy. According to the conception of these earnest writers there is no plot for a play without a peck of trouble. We don't want any such dramatic dishes served. We don't want people to play upon our feelings, and yet pay them for it. Occasionally, we are willing to have something a little bit sad, but we want it to end happily. But the earnest ones tell us that in real life few sad stories end happily, that their pictures are true to life. Hang it, we ourselves know they are true to life. There's plenty of trouble at home,--that's why we go to the theatre--to forget it. Gorky pictures a man--fat and forty, successful and comfortable as a government official--a man, who after reading 'a book of one of these modern much-praised writers,' comes to the conclusion that he is 'an insignificant nonentity, a superfluous being, of no use to any one.'